My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
oh she sang at gmail dot com
Green hills, blue doorways and windowsills, potatoes-rice-bananas, red termite dirt, franglais, being stared at for my skin color, staring in turn at other white people, smiles, confusing Kinyarwandan for French, 560 francs to a dollar, showering in a bucket, mosquito nets, malaria-pill sunburn, more potatoes/rice/bananas, every meal potato-rice-bananas, wishing for salt shakers, Coke made with real sugar in 30 cl bottles, returning the bottle, Primus beer, riding mototaxis while holding my breath.
We worked for two days at a school. The children took my picture, shrieked when I said Real Madrid was mon equipe favori, and asked, “are you loving your president Obama?” Yes, I said, and they shrieked again. They recorded me standing, sitting, talking, and gave me bracelets made of paper. It was being a Westerner in a rural area where these students had not even been to Kigali, had seen very few white people. I felt, feel, unduly honored.
Rwanda is brushing your teeth with bottled water, haggling with mototaxi drivers, cool and dry and so beautifully hilly. It’s seeing purple and white banners that commemorate, solemnly, with an ill-feelng in the pit of you stomach, massacre sites from the great scar of 1994. It is no longer wondering what he, she, they were doing 15 years ago, because the country is now more than that, because it is vibrant and alive but always conscious of the past and always vigilant of the future (and its neighbors). It is pedestrian dirt and terrifying traffic circles and wishing to be less prominent and feeling home in the expat cafe and marveling at the giant 24-hour supermarket and paying 500 francs for an Egyptian Coke but 1500 for a Coke Zero.
I will come back here. This country makes me think I can be poetic, profound, but I can’t and I know that. It is beautiful and I will come back.
